I think the only reason my parents didn’t make up some story was because I’m the one who found her.
I remember I used to be afraid of the attic. Always thought there were ghosts there. My room was just below it, and the only reason I went up there at all was because the blood had finally dripped through a crack in my ceiling and onto my foot.
Drip, drip, drip.
The window was open. It was the hottest summer I remember. The air-conditioning didn’t work as well on the third floor, and it was hard to sleep in the heat.
When I woke up, I saw the drops of red on my foot. I remember thinking how strange it looked and wondering what it was when another drop fell, and I looked up to see the stain on the ceiling.
Every time I remember that night, I can’t for the life of me figure out why I went up there. Why I didn’t go wake my parents. But I didn’t. I took my flashlight and my teddy bear, and I climbed the creaky old stairs to the attic.
I remember when I first saw my aunt lying in that bed. I went over to her to ask her why she wasn’t sleeping in her room where it wasn’t so hot. That’s when I saw the pool of drying blood she was lying in. Saw how unnatural her color was, how gray.
She used to be so pretty whenever I looked at photographs of my mother and her sisters. Aunt Libby was the prettiest of them all in fact.
But not after she came back home from her years with the Scafoni family. They stole her beauty. Her youth. And ultimately, her life.
I turn the ring on my finger, look at the skull, the hollowed-out eyes, smear the droplet of blood over the bone.
It’s made of bone. How does someone do that? I turn it again and feel the three sharp tips of the amethysts.
“They chose you, Helena.”
I lay back down and close my eyes. I’m tired. I don’t think he’ll come back in here. I don’t think he’ll allow his brothers or mother in either. I do know without a doubt that Sebastian Scafoni is in charge of his family. Even his mother.
I just don’t know what that means for me.When I wake up, I am again disoriented.
We’re no longer flying. I can tell before I even blink my eyes open because I no longer hear the constant, dull noise of the plane in the air. My mouth feels like cotton. I’m thirsty. Did we land?
I open my eyes and am startled to find myself in a large bed in a huge bedroom. The walls are a creamy white, and there are two windows against one of them. Heavy drapes the color of old paper are pulled closed, but the sun is trying to creep in from the split between the panels.
There is a large dresser that looks like an antique against the far wall and a sitting area with a lilac chaise. A small, round side table with three delicate legs stands beside it and another, larger one stands on the other side.
I sit up a little. The satin blanket falls away, and I realize I’m naked.
A peek tells me I’m completely naked.
Someone must have undressed me. Was the whiskey so strong that I don’t remember landing and don’t remember being stripped of my clothes after being carried into this room?
A momentary sensory inventory tells me I haven’t been violated—apart from this stripping of my clothes.
I pull the cover back up to my chin and swing my legs over the side of the bed. I switch on the lamp on the nightstand because apart from that strip of sunlight at the windows, it’s dark inside. The lamp is pretty, one of those Tiffany Venetian ones with a variety of colors of glass. The only other item on the nightstand is my pocketknife.
Whoever undressed me let me keep it?
I get up and tug the blanket off the bed, wrap it around myself.
There’s another door that I can see leads to a bathroom, so I go to it, creeping slowly, although I can’t imagine anyone’s hiding in there. And I was definitely sleeping alone.
Once I’m in the bathroom, I close the door and switch on the light. It’s big, big enough for a tub for two at one end, a separate stand-up shower, also for two, a walled-off toilet, and two pedestal sinks.
There’s a large window above the bathtub. It’s stained glass, and the sun casts a pretty purplish-blue light into the room. I discover it’s sealed, so it can’t be opened, and I can’t look outside to try to figure out where I am. Try to figure out how hard it will be to run away and disappear.